any local leadership in such a country, whether left or right wing, is likely to be corrupt and serving their own interests over that of the people.
Well, my position as a communist is that the local leadership should be supported on popular grassroots movements, which will no doubt spawn in these countries eventually as they did naturally in Iran with Mosaddeq, in Cuba with Fidel, or in China with Mao. Of course, only socialist leaders fight to improve the actual living conditions of the people, which is why all poverty alleviation in the past half a century comes from China, which took 800 million people out of poverty and extreme poverty.
which is why all poverty alleviation in the past half a century comes from China, which took 800 million people out of poverty and extreme poverty.
Uhhh China has been embracing capitalism for a few decades now, sorry to say.
Problem with the “global south”, on the local level, is not even capitalism vs socialism. It’s corruption. The corruption of course stems from the poverty. When the leaders of your country come from poverty, had to gain power by force, and suddenly have access to resources… They do tend to abuse their access.
Yes, a functional socialist leadership is the best way forward for any of these countries, but even a well regulated capitalist system would be better than the leaders just selling their country to a bunch of corporations to increase their own wealth.
Uhhh China has been embracing capitalism for a few decades now, sorry to say.
China hasn’t been embracing capitalism, China has been reigning in capitalism through Dengism and Socialism with Chinese Characteristics. Why did China develop and industrialize while India didn’t? Why didn’t the same process as in China take place in Indonesia or Philippines or Bangladesh or Pakistan, all of them capitalist countries? Why didn’t Mexico or Brazil have similar growth rates?
Why did China develop and industrialize while India didn’t? Why didn’t the same process as in China take place in Indonesia or Philippines or Bangladesh or Pakistan, all of them capitalist countries
China mixes and matches capitalism with state capitalism and socialism. They use subsidies to squash overseas competition, that’s why you can get things for basically free, shipping included, from Aliexpress. China has almost as many billionaires as the US - and is going to overtake them soon enough.
They’re smart in utilizing protectionism too. It’s way harder for western companies to sell things to the Chinese than Chinese companies to sell things to the west. For an example, Volkswagen sells cars through joint ventures with Chinese companies. They can’t just have a western-owned company selling the cars.
Why not India? Tough to say. For one reason or another, China became the factory of the world. Since then, they’ve made a lot of smart decisions to both profit from it as much as possible, and retain their status (just look at Shenzhen. There’s no alternative in the world). The other countries you mentioned could never have the economies of scale that China does. India is the only one that theoretically could.
Yes. The serious analysis is that the Communist Party of China didn’t just “go capitalist”, it’s socialist with Chinese caracteristics. They did allow for a massive inflow of capital, but they reigned it in in such a way that the country would industrialize and develop, and not just be exploited for resources and cheap labour as it happens with India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia or Philippines.
If I brought up South Korea it was to explain why the capitalist model doesn’t seem to work for everyone, not because I like the south-korean fascist dictatorship. It’s very easy to industrially develop when the American policy is to industrialize you through massive investment in industry and with tech transfer because they want you as a loyal military base, and not as an enslaved peripheral colony. The problem isn’t “corruption in poor countries”, because China was poor and it did develop, and the Soviet Union was poor and it developed. The problem is finding the correct formula for industrialization while not allowing the western empire to demolish you for trying. The Soviet way was self-suficient economy, state-directed 5-year economic plans, and safety through nuclear deterrence. The Chinese way was to antagonize the Soviets to become a western pseudo-ally, attracting investment from the western capitalist companies in the sectors of the economy they wanted, and to reign in these investments so that China wouldn’t be a colony but an industrialized country with sovereignty of its own. Without communist parties at the head, Pakistan, India, Phillipines and Indonesia couldn’t manage this.
Mate, I’m Estonian. Get the fuck out of here with any soviet praise.
The soviet way was to have the elites be rich, while deporting regular people with too many cows in their barn to Siberia. They were doing pretty much what ICE is doing in the US right now - complain that your neighbour is a kulak, and they get removed. Only in the US it’s “complain that your neighbour is MS-13, and they get removed”. Plus the 5 year economic plans brought with them lovely things like the Holodomor.
China is going to have the most billionaires of any nation in probably less than a decade. “Socialism with Chinese characteristics” is just capitalism with actual oversight. Truth is, their government, particularly the court system, actually sides with corporations more than people. Try criticizing a major corporation and you’re fucked. Not even just Chinese corporations. You can’t criticize fucking Tesla in China.
If you want an actual example of the success of communism, there’s always Cuba. They’re blockaded by pretty much everyone, and yet have a pretty good standard of living. Better healthcare than many European nations, let alone the US. They may be poor, but that’s more the US’s fault than Cuba’s own.
“Mate, I’m American. Get the fuck out of here with any Mexican praise.” This is how you sound to anyone who sees through your thinly veiled racism and russophobia.
The soviet way was to have the elites be rich
Patently false propaganda. The Soviet Union was the most egalitarian that the region has ever seen.
They were doing pretty much what ICE is doing in the US right now - complain that your neighbour is a kulak, and they get removed
So you agree that people should be dying at 30 years of age in absolute poverty while working the lands for the landlords on exchange for a misery wage, dying of disease of starvation? Because that’s what led to the mass popular support for dekulakization.
Plus the 5 year economic plans brought with them lovely things like the Holodomor.
The famine of the early 30s is a sad tragedy in Soviet history, but it’s one of many famines that took place in the region from the time it was settled to begin with until the Soviets eliminated famines through industrial agriculture. While the first 5-year plans brought some misery such as the unforeseen sabotage of agriculture by kulaks, they also allowed the Soviet Union to industrialize at the quickest pace any country had industrialized up to that point, which is the main reason the Soviets were able to defeat the Nazis and save hundreds of millions of lives in the process.
China is going to have the most billionaires of any nation in probably less than a decade.
I have disagreements with some Chinese policy such as that, but the results are out there. If it weren’t for communism, China would be a western colony, and would be on a similar standing to India, to which it can be very much compared at the beginning of the 1900s. Why is China so much more developed than India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia or Philippines? It’s not a perfect country, but it’s some of the best the world has to offer.
If you want an actual example of the success of communism, there’s always Cuba.
I fully agree, but why do you criticise dekulakization in the USSR and not the repressions against landlords in Cuba? Most Cubans were literal slaves under the landowners, and worked the lands for next to nothing. There was a measurable degree of repression against landlords, why aren’t you crying your eyes out for them? Maybe just because you, as an Estonian, have been injected Russophobic racism in your life, in the same way that USians are injected anti-Mexican racism and Spaniards (like me) are injected anti-Moroccan racism? Why aren’t you complaining about the lack of freedom of press in Cuba? Why aren’t you complaining about the Cuban leaders having so much more than the Cuban people?
me checks timeline and notices that this poverty allevation didn’t start until long after Mao’s death and only after China switched to a capitalist mode of production…
Lol, that is fake news. Life expectancy dropped during the war period as expected, but it was about as high before the war as it was after. The methods Mao employed rather delayed the recovery.
I had the same discussion with one of your fellow MLs before, and this is just completely silly cherry-picking of data to make the disasterous policies of Mao look somehow less bad 🤡
Life expectancy from the graph was stable at abourt35 years old from 1850 to 1945, then Mao wins the war, and dies in 1976 with 60 years of life expectancy. Can you please tell me how to misread that?
An anarchist is indistinguishable from a lib when it comes to uneducated criticism of communism.
The data in your graph is too coarse to show the war dip, but other similar graphs your ML friends always cite, conveniently start right in the middle of the war period.
But regardless of that, your graph clearly shows that the before and after war life expectency was about the same, then there was a significantly delayed improvement during Mao’s reign of terror, and when he was sidelined due to illness in the 1970ties and capitalist policies adopted, China finally caught up to its peer counties.
And you can clearly see that Mao delayed the improvements seen during that time all over the world. And no, I am not claiming SK was a great country during that time, yet somehow despite having a brutal military dictatorship they still outperformed China under Mao on this metric, which shows just how bad Mao did.
then there was a significantly delayed improvement during Mao’s reign of terror, and when he was sidelined due to illness in the 1970ties and capitalist policies adopted, China finally caught up to its peer counties.
You’re misreading the data. The biggest step in the graph is from 1965 to 1970, full Maoism, and from 1970 to 1975 it’s still during Mao. I explicitly said at the beginning that life went from 35 to 60 and you said that’s false, you literally didn’t know the data, and now you’re moving the goalposts from “Maoism didn’t increase life expectancy” to “maybe it did but less so than in South Korea”.
As for why China developed slower than South Korea, South Korea is an American military base with a population of just a few tens of millions. It received humongous investments and tech transfer from the US as part of a specific policy. If you want to compare to something more akin to China, you could compare China to Indonesia or Philippines, which didn’t receive the same amount of American resources. What does life expectancy and poverty reduction tell you there?
Mao delayed the improvements seen during that time all over the world
All over the world? South Korea is the exception. Look at life expectancy evolution in India, Philippines, Indonesia, Bangladesh or Pakistan, all countries with a much greater population than South Korea. China industrialised because of communism, there’s a reason why it’s more developed than any of the aforementioned countries even if it had a very similar starting point in the early 1900s.
Also, you really think that telling me “Dengism in China uplifted 800mn people from poverty” is an argument against communism? The communist party of China literally envisioned the policies necessary to attract the level of western investment to grow so fast, and managed to direct this investment in a way that would industrialise the country and not just exploit it as the west does in South America and Southeast Asia. It’s the best example in history of poverty alleviation through conscious state policy. Dengism in China is not “capitalism”, it’s socialism with Chinese characteristics, and it’s what allowed China to become arguably the most powerful country in the 21st century in a way that Europe and the US can’t even begin to understand. I take it you’re a supporter of the modern Communist Party of China, which enabled all of this?
Also: what a fucking anarchist, mate, defending the literally fascist dictatorship of South Korea up to 1990 as the growth model of a country. You’re dirtying the name of anarchists, and I say it as a Marxist Leninist
Well, my position as a communist is that the local leadership should be supported on popular grassroots movements, which will no doubt spawn in these countries eventually as they did naturally in Iran with Mosaddeq, in Cuba with Fidel, or in China with Mao. Of course, only socialist leaders fight to improve the actual living conditions of the people, which is why all poverty alleviation in the past half a century comes from China, which took 800 million people out of poverty and extreme poverty.
Uhhh China has been embracing capitalism for a few decades now, sorry to say.
Problem with the “global south”, on the local level, is not even capitalism vs socialism. It’s corruption. The corruption of course stems from the poverty. When the leaders of your country come from poverty, had to gain power by force, and suddenly have access to resources… They do tend to abuse their access.
Yes, a functional socialist leadership is the best way forward for any of these countries, but even a well regulated capitalist system would be better than the leaders just selling their country to a bunch of corporations to increase their own wealth.
China hasn’t been embracing capitalism, China has been reigning in capitalism through Dengism and Socialism with Chinese Characteristics. Why did China develop and industrialize while India didn’t? Why didn’t the same process as in China take place in Indonesia or Philippines or Bangladesh or Pakistan, all of them capitalist countries? Why didn’t Mexico or Brazil have similar growth rates?
China mixes and matches capitalism with state capitalism and socialism. They use subsidies to squash overseas competition, that’s why you can get things for basically free, shipping included, from Aliexpress. China has almost as many billionaires as the US - and is going to overtake them soon enough.
They’re smart in utilizing protectionism too. It’s way harder for western companies to sell things to the Chinese than Chinese companies to sell things to the west. For an example, Volkswagen sells cars through joint ventures with Chinese companies. They can’t just have a western-owned company selling the cars.
Why not India? Tough to say. For one reason or another, China became the factory of the world. Since then, they’ve made a lot of smart decisions to both profit from it as much as possible, and retain their status (just look at Shenzhen. There’s no alternative in the world). The other countries you mentioned could never have the economies of scale that China does. India is the only one that theoretically could.
i.e. you don’t have a serious analysis.
So why don’t they have South-Korean style development?
Do you?
Are Chaebols a good thing now?
Yes. The serious analysis is that the Communist Party of China didn’t just “go capitalist”, it’s socialist with Chinese caracteristics. They did allow for a massive inflow of capital, but they reigned it in in such a way that the country would industrialize and develop, and not just be exploited for resources and cheap labour as it happens with India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia or Philippines.
If I brought up South Korea it was to explain why the capitalist model doesn’t seem to work for everyone, not because I like the south-korean fascist dictatorship. It’s very easy to industrially develop when the American policy is to industrialize you through massive investment in industry and with tech transfer because they want you as a loyal military base, and not as an enslaved peripheral colony. The problem isn’t “corruption in poor countries”, because China was poor and it did develop, and the Soviet Union was poor and it developed. The problem is finding the correct formula for industrialization while not allowing the western empire to demolish you for trying. The Soviet way was self-suficient economy, state-directed 5-year economic plans, and safety through nuclear deterrence. The Chinese way was to antagonize the Soviets to become a western pseudo-ally, attracting investment from the western capitalist companies in the sectors of the economy they wanted, and to reign in these investments so that China wouldn’t be a colony but an industrialized country with sovereignty of its own. Without communist parties at the head, Pakistan, India, Phillipines and Indonesia couldn’t manage this.
Mate, I’m Estonian. Get the fuck out of here with any soviet praise.
The soviet way was to have the elites be rich, while deporting regular people with too many cows in their barn to Siberia. They were doing pretty much what ICE is doing in the US right now - complain that your neighbour is a kulak, and they get removed. Only in the US it’s “complain that your neighbour is MS-13, and they get removed”. Plus the 5 year economic plans brought with them lovely things like the Holodomor.
China is going to have the most billionaires of any nation in probably less than a decade. “Socialism with Chinese characteristics” is just capitalism with actual oversight. Truth is, their government, particularly the court system, actually sides with corporations more than people. Try criticizing a major corporation and you’re fucked. Not even just Chinese corporations. You can’t criticize fucking Tesla in China.
If you want an actual example of the success of communism, there’s always Cuba. They’re blockaded by pretty much everyone, and yet have a pretty good standard of living. Better healthcare than many European nations, let alone the US. They may be poor, but that’s more the US’s fault than Cuba’s own.
“Mate, I’m American. Get the fuck out of here with any Mexican praise.” This is how you sound to anyone who sees through your thinly veiled racism and russophobia.
Patently false propaganda. The Soviet Union was the most egalitarian that the region has ever seen.
So you agree that people should be dying at 30 years of age in absolute poverty while working the lands for the landlords on exchange for a misery wage, dying of disease of starvation? Because that’s what led to the mass popular support for dekulakization.
The famine of the early 30s is a sad tragedy in Soviet history, but it’s one of many famines that took place in the region from the time it was settled to begin with until the Soviets eliminated famines through industrial agriculture. While the first 5-year plans brought some misery such as the unforeseen sabotage of agriculture by kulaks, they also allowed the Soviet Union to industrialize at the quickest pace any country had industrialized up to that point, which is the main reason the Soviets were able to defeat the Nazis and save hundreds of millions of lives in the process.
I have disagreements with some Chinese policy such as that, but the results are out there. If it weren’t for communism, China would be a western colony, and would be on a similar standing to India, to which it can be very much compared at the beginning of the 1900s. Why is China so much more developed than India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia or Philippines? It’s not a perfect country, but it’s some of the best the world has to offer.
I fully agree, but why do you criticise dekulakization in the USSR and not the repressions against landlords in Cuba? Most Cubans were literal slaves under the landowners, and worked the lands for next to nothing. There was a measurable degree of repression against landlords, why aren’t you crying your eyes out for them? Maybe just because you, as an Estonian, have been injected Russophobic racism in your life, in the same way that USians are injected anti-Mexican racism and Spaniards (like me) are injected anti-Moroccan racism? Why aren’t you complaining about the lack of freedom of press in Cuba? Why aren’t you complaining about the Cuban leaders having so much more than the Cuban people?
me checks timeline and notices that this poverty allevation didn’t start until long after Mao’s death and only after China switched to a capitalist mode of production…
Fake news. Life expectancy in China before Mao was 35, by the time he died was close to 60, Maoism saved hundreds of millions of lives.
Lol, that is fake news. Life expectancy dropped during the war period as expected, but it was about as high before the war as it was after. The methods Mao employed rather delayed the recovery.
I had the same discussion with one of your fellow MLs before, and this is just completely silly cherry-picking of data to make the disasterous policies of Mao look somehow less bad 🤡
So easy to prove libs wrong man
Lol, can you even read that graph? MLs constantly disproving themselves with their own sources 🙄
And I am not a “lib”, but an Anarchist 😅
Edit: and compare your above graph with this: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1088199/life-expectancy-south-korea-historical/ and then think about during which years Mao had the most influence on policy decisions in China…
Life expectancy from the graph was stable at abourt35 years old from 1850 to 1945, then Mao wins the war, and dies in 1976 with 60 years of life expectancy. Can you please tell me how to misread that?
An anarchist is indistinguishable from a lib when it comes to uneducated criticism of communism.
The data in your graph is too coarse to show the war dip, but other similar graphs your ML friends always cite, conveniently start right in the middle of the war period.
But regardless of that, your graph clearly shows that the before and after war life expectency was about the same, then there was a significantly delayed improvement during Mao’s reign of terror, and when he was sidelined due to illness in the 1970ties and capitalist policies adopted, China finally caught up to its peer counties.
Just compare your graph with the development in South Korea: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1088199/life-expectancy-south-korea-historical/
And you can clearly see that Mao delayed the improvements seen during that time all over the world. And no, I am not claiming SK was a great country during that time, yet somehow despite having a brutal military dictatorship they still outperformed China under Mao on this metric, which shows just how bad Mao did.
You’re misreading the data. The biggest step in the graph is from 1965 to 1970, full Maoism, and from 1970 to 1975 it’s still during Mao. I explicitly said at the beginning that life went from 35 to 60 and you said that’s false, you literally didn’t know the data, and now you’re moving the goalposts from “Maoism didn’t increase life expectancy” to “maybe it did but less so than in South Korea”.
As for why China developed slower than South Korea, South Korea is an American military base with a population of just a few tens of millions. It received humongous investments and tech transfer from the US as part of a specific policy. If you want to compare to something more akin to China, you could compare China to Indonesia or Philippines, which didn’t receive the same amount of American resources. What does life expectancy and poverty reduction tell you there?
All over the world? South Korea is the exception. Look at life expectancy evolution in India, Philippines, Indonesia, Bangladesh or Pakistan, all countries with a much greater population than South Korea. China industrialised because of communism, there’s a reason why it’s more developed than any of the aforementioned countries even if it had a very similar starting point in the early 1900s.
Also, you really think that telling me “Dengism in China uplifted 800mn people from poverty” is an argument against communism? The communist party of China literally envisioned the policies necessary to attract the level of western investment to grow so fast, and managed to direct this investment in a way that would industrialise the country and not just exploit it as the west does in South America and Southeast Asia. It’s the best example in history of poverty alleviation through conscious state policy. Dengism in China is not “capitalism”, it’s socialism with Chinese characteristics, and it’s what allowed China to become arguably the most powerful country in the 21st century in a way that Europe and the US can’t even begin to understand. I take it you’re a supporter of the modern Communist Party of China, which enabled all of this?
Also: what a fucking anarchist, mate, defending the literally fascist dictatorship of South Korea up to 1990 as the growth model of a country. You’re dirtying the name of anarchists, and I say it as a Marxist Leninist